Al-Jura (
Arabic: الجورة) was a
Palestinian village that was depopulated during the
1948 Arab-Israeli war, located immediately adjacent to the towns of
Ashkelon and the ruins of ancient
Ascalon. In 1945, the village had a population of approximately 2,420 mostly
Muslim inhabitants. Though defended by the
Egyptian Army, al-Jura was nevertheless captured by
Israel's
Givati Brigade in a November 4, 1948, offensive as part of
Operation Yoav.
The
Shrine of Husayn's Head was located outside the town, until it was destroyed by the Israeli army in 1950.
The founder and spiritual leader of the
Hamas militant organization
Ahmed Yassin was born in al-Jura.
History
Al-Jura (El-Jurah) stood northeast of and immediately adjacent to the mound of
ancient and medieval
Ascalon.
Byzantine ceramics have been found here, together with coins dating to the seventh century CE.[7]
Ottoman era
In the first Ottoman
tax register of 1526/7 the village was unpopulated.[8] By 1596 CE, however, the village had been refounded as part of the nahiya of Gaza and named Jawrat al-Hajja. It had 46
Muslim households, an estimated population of 253; who paid a total of 3,400
akçe in taxes.[9]
Marom and
Taxel have shown that during the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries, nomadic economic and security pressures led to settlement abandonment around Majdal ‘Asqalān, and the southern coastal plain in general. The population of abandoned villages moved to surviving settlements, while the lands of abandoned settlements continued to be cultivated by neighboring villages. Thus, al-Jura absorbed the lands of al-Rasm and al-Bira, the last one separated from the village by the lands of al-Majdal.[8]
The Syrian
Sufi teacher and traveller Mustafa al-Bakri al-Siddiqi (1688–1748/9) visited Al-Jura in the first half of the eighteenth century, before leaving for
Hamama.[10]
In 1838,
Edward Robinson noted el-Jurah as a Muslim village, located in the Gaza district.[11]
In 1863 the French explorer
Victor Guérin visited the village, which he called Djoura, and found it to have three hundred inhabitants. He further noted that he could see numerous antiquities, taken from the ruined city, and that the inhabitants of the village grew handsome fruit trees, as well as flowers and vegetables.[12] An Ottoman village list from about 1870 found that the village had a population of 340, in a total of 109 houses, though the population count included men, only.[13][14]
In the late nineteenth century, the village of Al-Jura was situated on flat ground bordering on the ruins of ancient
Ascalon.[15] It was rectangular in shape and the residents were Muslim. They had a mosque and a school which was founded in 1919.[10]
In the
1945 statisticsEl Jura had a population of 2,420 Muslims,[2] with a total of 12,224
dunams of land, according to an official land and population survey.[3] Of this, 481 dunams were used for citrus and bananas, 7,192 for plantations and irrigable land, 2,965 for cereals,[18] while 45 dunams were built-up land.[19]
At the end of November 1948, Coastal Plain District troops carried out sweeps of the villages around and to the south of
Majdal. Al-Jura was one of the villages named in the orders to the
IDF battalions and engineers platoon, that the villagers were to be expelled to Gaza, and the IDF troops were "to prevent their return by destroying their villages". The path leading to the village was to be mined. The IDF troops were ordered to carry out the operation "with determination, accuracy and energy".[20] The operation took place on 30 November. The troops found "not a living soul" in Al-Jura. However, the destruction of the villages was not completed immediately due to the dampness of the houses and the insufficient amount of explosives.[21]
In 1992, the village site was described: "Only one of the village houses has been spared; thorny plants grow on the parts of the site not built over by
Ashqelon."[5]
It was considered the most
important Shi'a shrine in Palestine,[26] but was destroyed by the Israeli army in 1950, a year after
hostilities ended, on the orders of
Moshe Dayan. It is thought that the demolition was related to efforts to expel the remaining
Palestinian Arabs from the region.[24]
^Grossman, D. (1986). "Oscillations in the Rural Settlement of Samaria and Judaea in the Ottoman Period". in Shomron studies. Dar, S., Safrai, S., (eds). Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House. p. 383
^Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p.
87
^Government of Palestine, Department of Statistics. Village Statistics, April, 1945. Quoted in Hadawi, 1970, p.
137
^Coastal Plain District HQ to battalions 151 and ´1 Volunteers`, etc., 19:55 hours, 25 Nov. 1948, IDFA (=Israeli Defence Forces and Defence Ministry Archive) 6308\49\\141. Cited in Morris, 2004, p.
517
^Coastal Plain HQ to Southern Front\Operations, 30 Nov. 1948, IDFA 1978\50\\1; and Southern Front\Operations to General Staff Divisions, 2. Dec. 1948, IDFA 922\75\\1025. Cited in Morris, 2004, p.
518
Peretz, Ilan; Eisenberg-Degen, Davida (2017-12-18).
"Ashqelon, el-Jura". Hadashot Arkheologiyot – Excavations and Surveys in Israel (129).
Petersen, A. (2017).
"Shrine of Husayn's Head". Bones of Contention: Muslim Shrines in Palestine. Heritage Studies in the Muslim World. Springer Singapore.
ISBN978-981-10-6965-9. Retrieved 2023-01-06.